When I (a) ran out of travel money and (b) was unable to travel due to COVID and decided to retreat into book blogging, one of the things I thought I’d do was write a bit about the characters of the books that I’ve read. I figured I’d do deep dives into protagonists and antagonists and things. I never imagined that my first character post would be about Nita and Dairine’s dad, of all things.
Additionally, I’m writing this at 2 am because my stomach hurts and I’m having trouble sleeping.
What follows will have spoilers for any/all of the Young Wizards books up to and including Games Wizards Play, but not for any of the short stories, novelettes, etc., or the New Millennium Editions. Turn back here, all who haven’t read all of the books in question and don’t want to be spoiled.
I’m currently rereading Wizards Holiday, which is one of my favorite books in the Young Wizards series. And one thought led to another, and here I am.
In one of the future books, I think it might be Wizards at War, but I might be misremembering, Roshaun says something to Dairine about how she . . . acts like a Wellakhite or something and that maybe she was born on the wrong planet.
I think that Roshaun is mistaken. I think that her father, Harry, was born on the wrong planet. It’s pretty clear by now that Harry was supposed to be, like, Nelaid (Roshaun’s father)’s brother or nephew or cousin or something, but the fact that the Wellakhite people assassinate member of their royal family led to the line he was supposed to have been born into ending before he could be born.
Would that have made Dairine a distant enough relative to make her a prospective queen of Wellakh? Or close enough that she and Roshaun would’ve been BFFs or what? I don’t know.
I originally thought that maybe Harry was a wizard. I mean, he could see the characters of the Speech, which non-wizards aren’t supposed to be able to do and Nita and Dairine’s visit to Ireland just in time to save them from the Lone Power was arranged by “North American regional,” whomever that is.
But why would he have acted so skeptical when Kit and Nita came out to him and Betty in Deep Wizardry in that case?
I guess that Harry and Betty’s conversation about sending Nita to Ireland being somehow “North American regional” will either stay a plot hole, or maybe something is explained in one of the stories I haven’t read? Or maybe Duane patched that up in the New Millennium Editions, which I haven’t read yet, either?
Another thing about Harry that hits me pretty hard is that he wasn’t offered the Oath. Once he discovers that Wizardry is a thing, he wishes that he’d been able to be a wizard and Nita thinks that if he’d really wanted to be a wizard he’d be one because there aren’t enough wizards to go around.
And I know that I never would’ve been offered the Oath. My mom had cancer when I was eight and then hid it from me for a couple of years after the danger was all over. This led to several years (including the one when I’d most likely have been offered the Oath) of being terrified of getting cancer. I remember asking my mom for a comprehensive list of all of the parts that can get cancerous so I knew which parts I didn’t have to worry about if they changed. I even panicked when I noticed the join between the two pieces of lower lateral cartilage in my nose.
I can’t help but wonder if something like that happened to Harry.